Illusions on the path to "net-zero"

This is the close of BODHI’s 34^th year. Since I am now 68 I have been writing editorials such as this almost half of my life (the first one was released two years after BODHI was formed, i.e. in 1991). When Susan and I co-founded BODHI we had the hope that the presentation of facts reported in scientific journals, such as about climate change, would help motivate "engaged Buddhists" - the original main target group of BODHI - to accelerate the energy transition. The newsletter in December 1992 (BODHI Times 3) (archived at https://www.bodhi-australia.com/bodhi-times-newsletter-archive.html) focussed on climate change, while the accompanying editorial discussed what I called the "technology trap" - i.e.that populations in too many low-income settings (including China) would lock in polluting technologies, such as coal-fired electricity, which in turn would trap the whole word in its harmful net. In February 2023 the Global Energy Monitor released a report stating that coal fired power stations in China (under construction or recently approved) are six times as large as similarly new projects in the the rest of the world combined. A major driver for this frenzy is the big increase in the use of air conditioners in response intense heat waves in China. The technology trap continues to hold us in its vice.

In the early 1990s I also hoped that the presentation of data about social injustice and other forms of inequality would help to attract and to motivate our readers towards greater social activism, and also to glean some support for our many projects – always intended to be with partners in what were then called “developing” countries, but which today is increasingly referred to as the ‘global South”. (See my essay on how the How the "Third World" became the "Global South", adapted from my entry in the International Encyclopaedia of the Scoial Science (published in 2007).

Evidence of a successful energy transition is – still – very limited, even if the World Economic Forum claims that over 99% of existing coal power plants in the US are more expensive to keep in operation than existing solar and wind replacements.  A way to explain this apparent paradox are the words "keep in operation" - aged coal stations are probematic and expensive to maintain. Although China is building much renewable energy infrastructure, its 50 gigawatt expansion of coal (in 2022) must mean it's more feasible and cheaper to do this, at least in China.

Alternatives to coal, oil and gas, such as photovoltaic cells and wind turbines exist, but their production and construction consumes considerable energy. Although the lifespan and efficiency of these energy transforming technologies (i.e. from wind and sunlight to electricity) is improving, these devices also are also impermanent. I have been told that in some countries cheap materials are used for photovoltaic cells, and thus they too quickly turn into waste.

In 2015, soon after the supposed “breakthrough” climate change conference in Paris, the former petrochemical engineer, Kevin Anderson published a brilliant opinion piece in the journal Nature. He acknowledged the Paris meeting as “a genuine triumph of international diplomacy” and a “testament to how assiduous and painstaking science can defeat the unremitting programme of misinformation that is perpetuated by powerful vested interests. He also wrote “it is the twenty-first century’s equivalent to the victory of heliocentrism over the inquisition.”

Yet, Anderson also warned that the meeting risked being a total fantasy, as the world’s primary strategy is based so much on technologies that as yet do not exist – especially something called BECCS – “bioenergy with carbon capture”. Anderson pointed out that only a few years before Paris such “exotic Dr Strangelove options were discussed only as last-ditch contingencies. Now they are Plan A.”

Eight years later enthusiasts have broadened the scope of BECCS to include direct air capture (of carbon) with carbon storage, enhanced weathering, biochar and direct ocean capture with carbon storage. However, a tweet (March 2023) by Dr Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, suggests that these carbon dioxide removal strategies are no more realistic than Anderson concluded.



The lure of such technologies – including geo-engineering (for which momentum is growing, including in the form of a February 2023 open letter co-signed by Dr James Hansen, the former NASA scientist whose testimony to the US congress in 1988 did so much to alert the world to the risk of climate change) creates what is called "moral hazard", that is an excuse to delay action, as solutions are around the corner.

Project Drawdown lists 28 climate solutions; one of which is greater support for “rights based” family planning. Their report points out that “it is the outcome of family planning, slower population growth, that is the climate mitigation strategy.” increasingly – has long been pointed out as adding to “moral hazard”. That is, if a solution is around the corner it provides a reason to postpone the implementation of actions that could help today.

More about this in the forthcoming co-edited book "Climate Change and Global Health" (second edition) - I hope for publication in 2024. See https://climateandhealth.wixsite.com/website/chapters